-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 14:49:15 -0500 From: "Jeff Taylor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Reason Express List Member <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Reason-Express: REx38,v2 Welcome to Reason Express, the weekly e-newsletter from Reason magazine. Reason Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor and draws on the ideas and resources of the Reason editorial staff. For more information on Reason, visit our Web site at www.reason.com. Send your comments about Reason Express to Jeff A. Taylor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and Virginia Postrel ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). REASON Express September 20, 1999 Vol. 2 No. 38 1) Waco Civil Suit a Threat, Danforth Claims 2) Feds: Encryption? We Love Encryption 3) The Tax Code vs. Success 4) Congress Goes Spend Happy 5) Pity the Poor, Poor Champs 6) Quick Hits - - Waiting for Waco - - Former senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) hasn't exactly gotten off to a rousing start in his investigation in the 1993 Waco siege. His first official act was to ask a district court judge to put a pending civil suit brought by Waco survivors on hold. Danforth wants an order delaying for 30 days any discovery and witness interviews by government and plaintiffs' lawyers. He also wants his investigation to have first crack at all witnesses. This comes despite the fact that absent the civil suit, Waco would now only be a topic for discussion in newsgroups and on talk radio. "Because a civil trial inherently involves advocacy, testimony tends to be very well-rehearsed and coordinated with the testimony of other witnesses," Danforth wrote to U.S. District Judge Walter Smith. Well, that is kinda the point. Advocacy by each side leaves it up to observers to decide who has made the better case. In this instance, those sitting in judgment extend far beyond the courtroom to the body politic. Danforth cannot expect to swoop in, freeze everything in amber, and produce a crystal-clear summation of the facts which will settle the matter once and for all. Further, such an approach almost guarantees that his investigation will attempt to develop a "theory" which will inevitably lend more credence to some facts than to others, decisions which will then be picked apart by armchair conspiracists. Much better would be to leave the conclusion drawing to an informed public--and Danforth better hurry. An ABC News poll found that nearly six out of 10 Americans already believe that the FBI willfully covered up what it did at Waco. http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/Waco091499b.html http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/19/245l-091999-idx. html ************************************************************* - - Crypto Logic - - The Clinton administration appears to have backtracked in its long war against the export of encryption software. It has lifted bans on the export of powerful encryption software, and the nation's national security organs seem fine with the idea. This would seem to be a case of the dog that didn't bark. What will the FBI, NSA et al. get in return for this startling about-face? Well, there is the $80 million promised to fund improved code-breaking capabilities. Then there is the provision which would allow the hows and whys of any governmental code-breaking to remain secret, even if it produced information that was used in a criminal trial. So much for facing your accuser. Also, there is the sneaking suspicion that the announcement may have more to do with keeping Al Gore afloat among the Silicon Valley set than any long-term change in encryption policy. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-120817.html http://www.cdt.org/ http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/17/059l-091799-idx. html ************************************************************* - - Taxing Alternatives - - The latest case for a new tax code comes in the form of millions of Americans who will have to compute the dreaded alternative minimum income tax before they file their taxes next year. The AMT was supposed to hit only fat cats who--with the help of their tax lawyers and accountants--found loopholes which reduced their tax burden. The AMT hits such taxpayers at a 26 percent rate. But now, thanks to the basket of tax credits Congress has adopted in recent years, savvy middle-income taxpayers who avail themselves of a child-care credit here or education savings plan there could trigger the AMT. "This is unfair, unjustified, and inaction by this body is unreasonable," Sen. Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D-Ark.) said on the Senate floor. Clinton has proposed a two-year AMT exemption, which would cost around $1.5 billion. Congress could go along with that, provided there is a bill to attach it to. The larger $750 billion GOP tax cut is not welcome at the Clinton White House. http://cnn.com/US/9909/18/AM-MinimumTaxGlitch.ap/index.html ************************************************************* - - Busting a Cap in Their Heads - - Things are not any better on the spending side, where Congress is set to bust the 1997 spending caps. It will do so in particularly garish fashion. First, there is the chance that billions of dollars in spending will either be shoehorned into the last few days of this fiscal year or pushed off into 2001, depending on whichever makes the numbers look best. There has been some late opposition to such gimmicks, which is a blow for honesty if not frugality. Then there are the places the spending will go. The Senate slid an extra $4 million in toward the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. You may recall those agencies as ones which the GOP Congress was vowing to zero-out just a few years ago. The increases bring the NEA's budget to $103 million and the NEH's to $115 million. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/16/178l-091699-idx. html http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/17/035l-091799-idx. html http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/18/100l-091899-idx. html ************************************************************** - - Empty Baskets - - Hmmm, something is wrong with this picture. Win a major sports world championship and still lose money. Yet that is what the NBA's San Antonio Spurs claim happened to them last year. Team officials say the hoops champs lost $12 million. As usual, the way back to profitability winds through a new publicly funded arena. The plan is to build a $175 million building complete with the vital skyboxes which relieve corporate buyers of vast sums of cash. One hitch could be that Bexar County voters get to have a say on the idea on November 2. Interestingly, the region's tourism industry is fighting the new arena because hotel and car rental taxes would be used to pay for most of the construction. http://espn.go.com/nba/news/1999/0917/62331.html ************************************************************* QUICK HITS - - Quote of the Week - - "We East Timorese are thirsty for the blood of white people," militia leader Eurico Guterres on the prospects for an Australian-led peacekeeping force for the island. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/19/189l-091999-idx. html - - Maximize Your Minimums - - The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is harping on the makers of child safety seats to make them even safer, and go beyond the minimum safety standards now set by the government. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/15/185l-091599-idx. html - -Burning Question - - Voters in Washington, D.C., will finally learn the outcome of a November vote on the question of legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Congress moved to block the vote, preventing money from being spent to count the votes. Several groups sued to get the result released and a judge agreed. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/18/087l-091899-idx. html ############################################################## REASON NEWS The Reason Foundation and the National Tax Limitation Foundation invite you to attend a very special celebration featuring Lady Margaret Thatcher, on Wednesday, October 27, 1999 at The Regal Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Please visit http://www.reason.org/events.html for more info or send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ############################################################## Reason Express is made possible by a grant from The DBT Group (http://www.dbtgroup.com), manufacturers of affordable, high-performance mainframe systems and productivity software. Current Circulation: 3946 We encourage you to forward Reason Express. If you received this issue from a forward, please subscribe. Previous issues of Reason Express are available at http://www.reason.com/re/re.html To subscribe visit http://www.reason.com/re/subscribe.html Or: To subscribe to the TEXT version just send a TEXT ONLY message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this in the body of the message: subscribe Reason-Express [EMAIL PROTECTED] For the HTML version the TEXT ONLY message would be: subscribe Reason-ExpressHTML [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your email and your domain would be something like [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, use unsubscribe in place of subscribe. 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